Automatic bowling scorer systems that include score printing apparatus are known in the art. In some of these systems the printers print the game score data at the completion of each frame of the game. In some known boiling scorer printer systems of this type, the paper onto which the frame-by-frame and game total scores are printed already has printed thereon a bowling scoresheet grid pattern which defines the areas where the players' frame-by-frame and game total scores are to be located. Because of alignment problems that frequently occur between the print head and the pre-printed paper, the frame and total scores are not always printed in the designated areas defined by the grid pattern. This problem is compounded by the fact that players do not always bowl in their assigned sequence, in which case the next score to be printed may be above or below and/or to the left or right of the last printed score. Therefore, typically, the printer portion of an automatic bowling scorer system is one of the more complicated and least reliable portions of that system.
Even in a known system where the game score data is printed out only after a game is completed, such as disclosed in Warner U.S. application Ser. No. 319,353 filed Dec. 29, 1972, the printed information is not in the usual bowling scoresheet format comprising a parallel line for each bowler, and the printout is not made against a pre-printed background grid.